Category: Autodesk

Autodesk Screencast is a great screen recording tool. However, it is very tied to the cloud. What if you just want to grab the screen capture video file to put it onto your company LAN or insert it into a presentation?

The short story:

Set the Screencast folder location

Setup a RealTimeSync to a ‘Screencast backup‘ folder

Run the RealTimeSync on startup

When you want the source video file, navigate into the backup folder, find the Screencast you want and look for a package.zip. Inside here is the webm file you can copy out and play with VLC or some other player.

You could also use a video converter to convert the webm file to an mp4 or some other format that you could embed into PowerPoint etc.

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Sometimes in Glue addin for Revit will fail with the message “Oneormoregluingerrorsoccurred“.

You may be able to workaround this problem by following these steps:

After receiving the error, immediately browse to your Temp directory. To do this, open Windows Explorer and type %TEMP% in the address bar.

Sort by Date Modified

Look for a DWF or NWC that matches the View Name that failed to Glue in Revit

Grab that file, and remove the suffix (usually a few digits) so that the DWF Filename = View Name = Glue Model name

Using the Glue desktop app, upload that model manually

Renamed model ready for upload

This process opens up an interesting possibility… usually when exporting a DWF using plain Revit, it will always use Project Internal coordinates. However, the Glue addin can actually export DWFs with Shared Coordinates (if you choose that in the Glue export More Options dialog).

Using the above steps 1-5, you can ‘find’ this DWF with Shared Coordinates and use it wherever you please… such as in Navisworks.

I have posted many times over the past few years about Project Skyscraper, which then became CollaborationforRevit (C4R). Having used the cloud service in beta, I was keen to get it going on some live projects. Unfortunately, CollaborationforRevit was only available in the USA…

Until now, that is! Check out this press releasefor details on the global launch. Quote:Released and available in North America only since December 7, 2014, CollaborationforRevit will be available for commercial global use as of January 7, 2016.

AutodeskA360CollaborationforRevit is a service that works with Revit software to connect project teams with centralized access to BIM project data in the cloud. Image courtesy of Autodesk

I, for one, am very excited about this. I have been involved in at least one geographically distributed vanilla Revit Server setup, and I think that the necessity to have ‘my IT people talk to your IT people to set up a DMZ between our VPNs’ is a bit counter-productive. In these situations, the global availability of C4R will really shine. Now, firms will be able to spin up a C4R instance very quickly and get working together, on real projects and in real-time.
You can hear Ralph Bond interviewing Sylvia Knauer on the Autodesk AEC Channel Podcast here in this mp3.

Between this global launch of CollaborationforRevit, and the improvements in the Glue – Navisworks connection in 2016 products, my Federated Model Streamer concept is one step closer to reality 🙂

Interestingly, there is some talk of a completely free offering, after the free preview:Autodesk is now accepting reservations for a limited release and free preview version of Autodesk BIM360Docs at www.bim360.com/docs. The product is expected to come to market in early 2016. In addition to the free, limited version of BIM360Docs, Autodesk will offer the option to subscribe to additional capabilities that scale to meet more advanced needs of construction firms. The product will initially be available in English only.